URBAN GUILD AWARDS 2022 PROGRAM

OVERVIEW
The Guild Awards program acknowledges design work that best exemplifies the Guild’s mission and increases public awareness that this type of design work is eminently achievable. It is toward these goals that the program is oriented. Although there are various related professional organizations and awards programs that share some aspect of these goals, the Guild Awards Program is intentionally structured to be distinct from other awards programs.

The 2022 Awards Task Force:
Jeremy Sommer, Sommer Design Studios (Chair)
Thomas Dougherty, Innerblock Design Studio
Brian Mork, Studio Mork

The 2022 Jury:
Michael Diamant (New Traditional Architecture)
Lauren Kelly (Moser Design Group, Guild Member)
Kevin Klinkenberg (Midtown KC Now, Guild Member)
Eric Osth (Urban Design Associates, Architect)
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (DPZ CoDESIGN, Architect and Urbanist)
Frank Starkey (People Places, Developer)

2022 URBAN GUILD AWARD WINNERS
Announced December 13, 2022

You can download the 2022 Urban Guild Awards booklet here

Category: Student Work

This award celebrates built or unbuilt design work which exemplifies criteria in either Design Excellence or Design Exploration, but is performed by a student(s).

Thoughts from the Jury: “The three projects offer an encouraging view of the dedication to excellence of designers in training. We were impressed by the powers of observation at three different scales of design: building, neighborhood, and city. All three cases combine thoughtful master plans that are de-tailed with care and precision.”

Andrew von Maur, Andrews University
A Vision for Buchanan, MI Project Summary: The project focused on a number of sites selected by the City of Buchanan Plan Commission, including various private and public properties at Riverfront Park on the city’s Northside. A major focus of the project was to conceptualize redevelopment strategies in the historic downtown, including streetscape and public space improvements to enhance walkability as well as diverse housing and private development opportunities. The ten graduate student team consulted with a traffic engineer to help generate practical but transformative design solutions, including an emphasis on waterfront walkways to promote all-season activity.

Metaya Tilahun, University of Notre Dame
Gondar Academy Project Summary: The new quarter is proposed to be a dynamic and walkable urban structure that will include a range of residential, commercial, and civic buildings. This project has the potential to introduce New Urbanism to developing countries such as Ethiopia and with that the possibility to put an end to the never-ending expansion and sprawl that is eating away cities such as Addis Ababa. The prism is that by centering towns and neighborhoods on civic spaces, we can then achieve the more natural “cellular” development of urban forms that have been achieved in pre-industrial times.

Grace Levey, University of Miami
Wynwood Norte Project Summary: Wynwood Norte is located at the northern edge of the City of Miami’s urban core. Historically, it has been an affordable, close knit, and culturally rich community. The project consisting of 16 individual units was designed in a way that strengthens the existing community by providing both the middle class and the affordable housing on a currently underdeveloped lot. The project is divided into 4 modules, each consisting of 4 units that are connected through a shared entrance and courtyard.

Category: Design Exploration

This award celebrates the built or unbuilt work that demonstrates visionary innovation within an urban context. In the context of this award, ‘exploration’ is understood as a conscious attempt to identify new and innovative design strategies for improving the urban built environment. Submitted projects may be any type, scale, or program so long as they are successful in directly furthering the mission of the Guild. Submitted design work for this category must have been designed within the past five years.

Thoughts from the Jury: “From the on-the-ground realization of the Katrina Cottage charrette proposals, to the Detroit “urban village” vision for neighborhood rebuilding, to researched and comprehensive guide for Supportive Housing, these three projects show the value and power of design thinking for challenges still seeking solutions. Representing the trajectory from the first idea, to its illustration, to the mapping of a process for implementation, they should encourage all who seek to find solutions through drawing!”

Donald Powers, Union Studio Architecture and Community Design
Supportive Housing for Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder Project Summary: This project is an online, interactive report focused on the design of supportive housing for adults with autism. We created this report based upon our research conducted for three projects developing housing options for adults with autism. It is our hope this report will be a useful resource for organizations, parent groups, and design teams. The report has three primary goals, Create a Guide for design, Compile Existing Research, and Provide a Catalyst for Conversation.

Erik Bootsma, Erik Bootsma Architecture
St. Aubin Village, Detroit, MI Project Summary: A master plan for the development of an “urban village” in Detroit, Michigan commissioned by a nearby church congregation. The intent is to offer homes for the members of its congregation who currently drive from the far flung suburbs into Detroit to worship, thus transforming the existing commuter community of worshipers into a community every day of the week, not just on Sundays.

Bruce Tolar, Artifex Cottages
Modular Cottage Project Summary: Out of the 2005 Gulf Coast charrettes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina came a portfolio of Katrina Cottages. While ambitions of the charrette weren’t realized at the transformational scale many hoped, an infill cottage neighborhood arose in one coastal town to model key ideas and to begin to accumulate a set of lessons learned that can be applied in the broader housing crisis. The most hard won of those lessons: how to integrate the language and practice of architectural design with the language and practice of factory engineered housing. In 2021, the latest iteration of that exploration conversation was installed in the expanding cottage neighborhood.

Category: Design Excellence

Murphy Antoine, Torti Gallas
Churchill North, Richmond, VA Project Summary: Church Hill North embodies a crafted and created context and reflects the aspirations of its low and mixed-income residents, bringing the best parts of town to a previously neglected quarter of Richmond. A safe, decent, affordable, and dignified neighborhood quadrant takes shape and is thoroughly rooted in the precedents of the City of Richmond’s best neighborhoods and traditional architecture.

Stephen Poulakos, Seabrook Land Company
Market Street Town Center and Urban Core, Seabrook WA Project Summary: This 14 acre urban core is part of a purpose-built hilltop resort town located along the Pacific Ocean. Both its primary main street, Market Street, and the secondary urban blocks are perpendiculary oriented to telescope inward, drawing water views deep into town while reinforcing the sense of place. Prominent civic structures like the community’s town hall and large market building work in concert with nearby “Founder Lot” homes, whose architectural features create iconographic vista terminations, deflected vistas and other architectural way-finding features that lead one to and from the urban core with ease.

Sarah Alexander, Torti Gallas
Boneval, Washington, DC Project Summary: Located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC, Boneval is an elegant 40 unit condominium building designed to seamlessly blend with the character of the surrounding rowhouse neighborhood. As the largest residential historic district in the city, the neighborhood is composed primarily of rowhouses interspersed with low-rise multifamily buildings of various style and periods which sit side-by-side, forming a continuous wall broken only by street intersections.

Kenny Craft, Craft Design Studio
The Surf Hotel South Main, Buena Vista, CO Project Summary: The Surf Hotel anchors the South Main neighborhood in Buena Vista, Colorado and is a stone’s throw from the Arkansas River, the most popular whitewater rafting river in the United States. The architecture aspires to be rooted in its place, authentic, and ultimately timeless. Utilizing traditional design principles, local materials, artistic/craftsman expression, as well as some borrowed inspiration. While squarely rooted in the Mountains of Colorado, the double steel gallery and intricate masonry details give a nod to architectural inspiration from New Orleans.

2021 URBAN GUILD AWARD WINNERS

You can download the 2021 Urban Guild Awards booklet here

Category: Design Excellence

This award celebrates built design work that masterfully applies timeless design principles in a manner that refines them and best integrates them into their urban context. Submitted projects may be any type, scale, or program so long as they are successful in directly furthering the mission of the Guild. Submitted design work for this category must have been built within the past five years.

DEXTER AVE
Mountain Brook, Alabama

This project is comprised of three townhouses anchored by an attached, neighborhood-scale office space. Situated on a the corner of an urban commercial block, this building provides a soft transition between the local commercial businesses and the surrounding single-family homes. The office space’s floor-to-ceiling expanse of windows faces the sidewalk, acting as a gateway from community to residential—an inviting jewel box meant to be seen into, connecting the tenants to passersby.

Submitted by:
UNION STUDIO
Providence, RI

This project infills and repairs a break within the historic urban fabric along the Newport waterfront, connecting this important block back into the surrounding community in a way that strengthens the pedestrian experience and honors the surrounding neighborhood. Passing through an urban “portal” supported by wooden ships braces, pedestrians have access to an internal public courtyard, restaurant, retail spaces and hotel lobby all overlooking the harbor.

THE BEND
Carlton Landing, Oklahoma

This project is a six-home pocket neighborhood located within a larger Traditional Neighborhood Development. Set on .6 acres originally platted for three cottages, the project consists of two shared gathering spaces and six cottages ranging from 1700sf to 2100sf. The court is configured in the arcing shape of a horseshoe, fronting a shared courtyard. A garden wall and moon gate anchor the apex of the horseshoe, leading to an intimate hardscaped courtyard & fire pit.

ZUMA WELLNESS CENTER
Alys Beach, Florida

Located on the corner of a 3⁄4-acre site, this project has a connected urban design relationship with Caliza Pool and the Beach Club, forming a triangle between the three. Guests are welcomed by a garden court entry enclosed with a detailed wood screen wall. This point of entry hinges two wings—the locker rooms and covered pool along the western edge, and the fitness spaces and offices along the southern edge. The two wings form an interior courtyard, creating a space for indoor wellness activities to expand outdoors.

ABOUT THE JURY

AWARDS PROGRAM TASK FORCE

View past winners for 2019 and 2020 here. Click on desired year.